Sivaji - A Review

At a whopping 100 crore rupees budget, produced by AVM Productions, one of the leading production houses in India, directed by the most high profile director, Shankar, AR Rahman composing the tunes and studded by the super star Rajinikanth himself, a movie cannot get bigger. Undoubtedly, Sivaji is and probably will be the biggest tamil film to hit the kollywood screens.

I was very excited to watch the file after almost 2 months of its release while I was back in Chennai for a brief period. Having booked the tickets at Satyam, the best place to watch a movie in the city, I had been to the movie with my mum and dad, again something 've done long long before. With kid and wife away to her home town, it was ready set game for 'no thangamani enjoy!'

Storyline: Our hero, a US return wanting to spend all his earnings for a noble cause in setting up educational institutions for the poor and needy bumps into a political kingpin, having educational institutions raking up tens of millions from all sects of the public as capitation, etc loses all his wealth and makes a comeback in overcoming not only the kingpin, Suman but many other industrialists and high profile individuals who had evaded taxes thereby creating black money.

If I were to sum up the entire review in one line, The movie was a big let down. The fight scenes were clearly the biggest let down with each of the for about 8-10 minutes, the matrix styled action did not really gel-well with the typical kollywood one's. The movie itself ran for more than 3 hours. Rajini and Suman filled the screns right from the start till the end. Shreya does a neat role with opportunity for acting besides the revealing in the songs. The 2nd half dragged quite a bit with unbelievable ways in which our super star uncovers the black money from others.

Vivek was good in the first half while seasoned stars like Raghuvaran, Livingston and VMC Haniffa not being utilized to their best. Vadivukkarasi, Manivannan and Nayantara are also in the cast.

The picturization of the songs, as always, was exceptional. Another typical from Shankar. A special mention for the cinematography where KV Anand scores a perfect 10.

Coming out of the movie, I am unable to conclude if Sivaji is a Rajini movie or a Shankar movie 'coz it lacked a decent storyline, punch dialogues, mannerism, creativity. Probably the face saving factor was Rajini's Style which was all over the movie.

Driving through chennai traffic

It's been just a couple of days since 've returned from Chennai and I have still not recovered from the chaotic traffic scene. While it's been close to a year since 've been in Singapore, I would say that the traffic in Chennai must have doubled during this time, given that there are so many completed and upcoming projects, especially IT companies that house tens of thousands of people all over the country and some even from abroad.

Best examples would be GN Chetty Road, Venkat Narayana Road both in T.Nagar, having 6-7 new buildings that have come up in less than 2 years and probably holding up ten to fifteen thousand employees. This apart from the floating crowd around T.Nagar who are busy shopping in Pothy's, Chennai Silks, RMKV, Saravana Stores, Nalli, Kumaran and Sri Krishna Collections.

The 100 feet road on Ekkaduthangal which was once not so popular with old and sick industries, now boasts buildings with more than one lakh square feet. While Olympia Tech Park and Virtusa are completed and occupied, the other two projects are close to the heels of completion which would only add to the chaos. No special mention for Adyar and Thiruvanmiyur which are neighbours to the OMR.

Adding to the already chatotic traffic is the coming up of 5-6 flyovers across critical junctions in chennai. Koyambedu, T.Nagar, Kodambakkam and Kathipara Junction to name a few.

However, mature areas like Nungambakkam and most importantly Mount Road, once considered to be the life lines of Chennai city were scantily crowded. These were clear indications in the shift or transformation of the profession to Information Technology and IT Enabled Sector for the new breed.

While setting the traffic scene right in Chennai looks next to impossible, it is important that law and order is at its best. Something that I doubt would happen in Chennai in the next 200 years ;-) The above collage, which I managed to grab from flickr and google are clear indicators of what I mean. While it is true that the traffic scene in Chennai cannot be set right overnight, there are'nt any indications that it would be any better in a decade or two. The only way I guess is to stiffen up the law and order scene by imposing heavy fines of say 1000 or even 5000 buck for traffic violation which probably would frighten the crazy Chennai motorists, especially the auto and two wheelers, not to forget the buses and heavy vehicles and the cars...and everyone infact!

Wait, I have another idea to set the traffioc scene right in chennai. It would be to have all the political flags and sirens removed from the politicians vehicles and let then drive through the above areas with no escorts in the front or rear of their vehicles, what say???